


the prosecution rests

by dirtybinary



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gunshot Wounds, M/M, Sassy Steve, sassy Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-19
Updated: 2014-11-19
Packaged: 2018-02-26 06:37:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2641775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtybinary/pseuds/dirtybinary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The Asset has to admit, ending a mission with Captain America crying into his lap is pretty unexpected. Even for him, and he is trained to anticipate all contingencies.</i>
</p><p>The Asset runs into his ex-mission halfway across the world. Surprisingly, very little fighting ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the prosecution rests

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [У обвинения нет вопросов](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2858411) by [Kana_Go](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kana_Go/pseuds/Kana_Go)
  * Translation into 中文 available: [控方呈案完毕](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3761959) by [aliciak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliciak/pseuds/aliciak), [dirtybinary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtybinary/pseuds/dirtybinary)



The Asset has to admit, ending a mission with Captain America crying into his lap is pretty unexpected. Even for him, and he is trained to anticipate all contingencies.

They meet outside a burning building in Moscow, as they do, the initial courtesies punctuated by the thunder of collapsing walls and the shrill call of a stray fire alarm. Not, the Asset thinks, that they are particularly courteous. The building in question is—well, was—a HYDRA research facility which he's just single-handedly blown up, thank you very much no applause needed, and he's been shot twice, in non-lethal but highly annoying places, so he feels wholly entitled to his irritation when he runs into* all six feet two inches of his most recent target on the front lawn, waving his chunk of vibranium at the Asset's head and yelling his name**.

* as in literally.

** "Bucky" (actually, given the circumstances, it sounds more like _Buuuuckyyyyyy_ ), which is an absurd name as far as the Asset is concerned. Like, he's pretty sure he once assassinated a nuclear engineer who had a dog named Bucky. Figures that Rogers, with all his other oddities, is the type to be fond of weird nicknames.

A minor scuffle ensues, which mostly consists of the Asset emitting curses in Russian and trying to shove Rogers off with the metal arm, until at last he finds himself pinned face down under two hundred and sixty pounds of yelling nonagenarian, and the piece of roof that had been heading for his head bounces harmlessly off the aforesaid chunk of vibranium instead.

Oh. Right.

After that he has no choice but to invite Rogers home, because it is only polite when faced with individuals who have saved you from a nasty concussion (astonishingly enough, the Winter Soldier does have a rudimentary grasp of manners and the social contract) and because, considering the present state of his body, he might not actually make it back to mission headquarters without external assistance.

By the time they arrive at the Asset's safehouse, he's leaking blood all down his front, and Rogers—whose eyes are at this point the approximate size of hard-boiled eggs, and whose face is more or less the same colour—is holding him up with one of his massive arms. He helps the Asset into the living room and deposits him on the musty couch, which is about a hundred years old and so mildewed it threatens to achieve sentience. The Asset is uncomfortably aware that much the same could be said of himself. Rogers gazes round the room, taking in facilities and escape routes, and his hands flutter indecisively near the zipper of the Asset's denim jacket. "Can I help?"

He looks ridiculous standing there, all that strength and command frozen in place like a sprinter who isn't sure if he just heard the starting pistol go off. The Asset supposes he can't blame him. Every single time Rogers has tried to touch him, he's only gotten a faceful of metal arm for his efforts. "Get water," he says. "Tweezers. Needle and thread. In the kitchen."

Bang. The big punk is off like a bloodhound. (Between fact-finding expeditions to museums and libraries, the Asset has taken to thinking of this incarnation of Steve Rogers as Big Punk, the previous one as Little Punk. It's simpler that way. Less room for misinterpretation. It goes something like this: Little Punk gets thrown in dumpster. Little Punk gets fished out by one James Buchanan Barnes, age seven. Little Punk goes in machine, comes out Big Punk. Big Punk gets on train with James Buchanan Barnes, age twenty-seven. Big Punk gets off train, alone. 

It's all very straightforward. Except it's not.) 

By the time Rogers comes back with all the requested items and a few more besides, the Asset has managed to shed his jacket, shirt and undershirt without ripping anything. One of the bullets has lodged above his left hipbone, the other just under the curve of his lowest rib on the same side. Rogers puts the things down on the floor. "Bucky—" 

The name sounds less dumb in his voice. Not an ideal time to engage this train of thought. "Tweezers."

Rogers hands them over, mouth drawn in a thin line. He looks so piteous standing there with nothing to do that the Asset relents and says, "Hand mirror. Jacket, right pocket."

The flesh arm is weak and tremulous from blood loss, but the metal one is steady. With the help of the pocket mirror, conveniently held in front of him in Rogers' white-knuckled hand, the Asset manoeuvres the tweezers into the wound and works the first bullet out. At this point he begins to wonder if Rogers has hemophobia or something, because the man seems to be teetering on the verge of tears. The Asset leans over to drop the bullet into the vase he keeps by the couch for this purpose, stops the bleeding with a towel hastily proffered by his newly acquired assistant, closes the wound with a couple of neat stitches, and applies a few perfunctory swipes of antiseptic ointment. Then the other bullet. Rinse and repeat. 

(Memory surfaces. Little Punk sits at kitchen table, teeth gritted, while Sarah Rogers a.k.a. Mama Punk stitches up gash on temple. Little Punk climbed a tree. Little Punk fell out of tree. Little Punk does that often.) 

This nuisance having been seen to, the Asset sits at attention, surveying the man before him. "I should probably say," he announces, "I don't like people looming over me. They all end up flying across the room at some point."

Rogers takes three steps back, arranging himself at a somewhat less obnoxious distance, between the broken TV the Asset keeps meaning to fix and the rickety shelf laden with dog-eared novels the Asset keeps meaning to read. "We should get you cleaned up," he says.

The Asset frowns. "I don't like showers."

"Don't mean to be rude, pal," says Rogers, "but I can sort of tell." He wrinkles up his nose. 

The Asset frowns even more deeply, but it is a different sort of frown. "You meant to be rude."

"Okay, so I did." Big Punk Rogers spreads his hands in the universal gesture of _sowhatchagonnadoboutit?_ "Don't do too well in enclosed spaces?"

"It's the echoes, actually," says the Asset. He considers Rogers for a moment, estimates likelihood of fainting, finds it low, and adds, "The cryo chamber echoed."

Rogers puts his hands back down at his sides. The corners of his mouth, which had been straining upward in—if not an actual smile—at least a promise of one, change direction so fast the Asset wonders he didn't get whiplash. "Okay," he says, firm and in control again. "Gimme a moment."

He exits the Asset's field of vision, which is distressing in more ways than one. When he reappears, he is juggling a fresh basin of steaming water and what looks like every single towel he could find in the house, draped all over his arms and across his shoulders. The Asset watches, wary, as he soaks one of the towels and wrings it out. "Don't worry, it's just water."

There are only about four hundred ways to kill someone with a basin of water. But this is Rogers. The Asset squints at him dubiously. "No looming."

"No looming," Rogers promises.

He goes on his knees and, moving in slow motion, applies the towel to the Asset's right hand. It's warm and soft, which comes as a surprise. The Asset's eyes have marked the coil of steam unfurling from the water's surface, but his skin still expected a blast of freezing cold. The towel glides between his fingers, over the back of his hand, across his palm and up his wrist. "Feels okay?" Rogers asks.

"Feels like being licked by an arthritic dog," the Asset complains.

Rogers grins and goes on, a little faster now. Change of towels; the first one is black with old dirt. Up the flesh arm, across the aching shoulders. Down the torso, carefully avoiding the freshly stitched wounds. The skin above the hip is ticklish. The Asset laughs. So does Rogers.

"Is this all right?" Rogers asks, gesturing at the metal arm with the towel.

"Better not," says the Asset. It's not a huge difference, but Rogers really does look better when not covered in blood and bruises.

"It's purring," Rogers points out.

The Asset scowls. "It's _whirring_. The servomotors are heated up. I've been killing people all day."

"Purring," Rogers insists, and takes a fresh towel to the grimy metal plates of the arm, which is indeed emitting a sound alarmingly similar to _prrrrrrrr._ The banter is easy and the gentleness of his touch familiar, and the Asset ignores the seven hundred warning bells in his head and does not pull away. Rogers slips the fingerless glove off and wipes down the hand, cleans the dried blood from the grooves between the plates. The Asset is sure some of it has been there since Stalin's day. "Can you feel this?" 

"Just pressure," says the Asset, who has spent more hours than he can remember listening to scientists and engineers talk across him. "No temperature sensation. Textures are hard to feel. The spinal input doesn't activate the neurons that release glutamate and substance P, which are necessary for pain sensation."

The towel, which has been climbing patiently towards the summit of his shoulder, skids back down to base camp. "But you do feel pain," Rogers says.

"Not in the arm," says the Asset. "It's just backaches, mostly." Which is not so much slapping a brave face on it as putting it in uniform and shipping it off to the Front, and wow, he's more bitter about that than he realised. "Oh, don't give me that pitying look. Mathematically speaking, this arm's been my friend longer than you have." 

Just like that, Rogers' face crumples again. Because the seventy-year bitterness is still there (talk about an acquired taste), and because his training has taught him to always press an advantage, the Asset trundles on. "You know it's true. They were welding steel into my collarbone right around the time you took your swan-dive into the Arctic. Which sounds like a lot more fun, compared to the alternative. Did you miss me on the plane?"

The towel falls away altogether. Rogers sits back on his heels, forehead scrunched up, blinking rapidly. "Yes, Buck," he says, in a voice that suggests he is in the early stages of asphyxiation by invisible noose. "As a matter of fact, I did."

His marble-blue eyes are glassy with a sheen of moisture. The Asset experiences a surge of emotion he can only describe as guilty panic. He is fairly sure making Captain America cry constitutes a war crime by the standards of the Geneva Convention.

He clears his throat, awkward. "I should've been there."

"No," says Rogers, with quite a bit of vehemence. "I should have caught you. I was only three inches away. I could have done it. Or I should've jumped down after you."

The Asset rolls his eyes heavenwards. This must, without a doubt, be the stupidest thing he has heard in all his long life, and given that he used to help train the STRIKE teams, he has been exposed to rather high concentrations of stupidity by now. "Yeah? What body part d'you feel like misplacing in the snow? How 'bout a leg? They could make you a nice bionic one to replace it, with a shiny star on the ankle. What a handsome pair we'd make."

The Sergeant's drawl seeps back into his voice when he's angry. He watches in mute horror as Rogers' eyes overflow and spill down over his cheekbones. Rogers grimaces, wipes his face on his sleeve in a swift angry movement. "I was actually thinking," he says, "that I still had my backup pistol on me. Six bullets. That's four HYDRA assholes we could've taken down, with two shots left over for you and me." He shrugs, giving a smile that only counts as a smile in the loosest sense of the word. "Peggy always called me dramatic."

The Asset remembers almost nothing about Margaret Carter, except that she was always perfectly coiffed and annoyingly right about everything. She must be right about this, too. (Big Punk loved Peggy Carter. Little Punk loved James Buchanan Barnes. This is another thing to be bitter about, when he can remember why.)

Cautiously, he moves his right hand to the back of Rogers' neck. "Bit late for that."

He lifts his other hand and tries to dab at the tear tracks on Rogers' cheeks. It probably feels like being punched in the face all over again, but his victim does not flinch. He just sniffs, and says, "I'm sorry, Buck."

This is maybe the second stupidest thing the Asset has ever heard, considering he recently (a) pumped this man full of bullets, (b) beat him to a bloody pulp, and (c) shot two of his friends and threw a third out of the sky. But he only shrugs, says, "Me, too," and lets Rogers bury his face in his thigh and sob.

(Little Punk gets two ribs staved in by thug's boot. Little Punk does not cry. Little Punk watches Mama Punk lowered into hole in ground. Little Punk does not cry. 

Big Punk cries copiously, and at great length.)

 

 

Later on, armed with the distinctly unfair advantage of wide red-rimmed eyes and stuffy nose, his head resting against the Asset's knee, Rogers asks, "Will you come back to New York with me?" 

They are halfway around the world. It took the Asset five weeks to get this far (ships are slow, he's still better at blowing planes up than flying them, and trains are out of the question for obvious reasons), and he can't imagine the journey will be any more pleasant in reverse. He looks for the last vestige of steel in his heart, and with difficulty, closes his voice around it. "Rogers," he says. "I've just been shot. I find the prospect of relocating to my bed rather daunting at present, never mind relocating to New York."

"I could carry you," Rogers says hopefully.

"Across the Atlantic?"

"Across the hallway," Rogers says, "to bed." And then he actually does it, damn him. The Asset's arm purrs the whole way. 

He sleeps fitfully, the constant white noise of low-level ache in his shoulders and back interrupted by red-hot flares of stabbing pain from the gunshot wounds in his torso whenever he moves. Rogers paces the apartment all through the night. The pad of his bare feet against the tiled floor is strangely comforting, like the thrum of a backbeat in a familiar song, regular and solid as bedrock. The Asset thinks, with hopeless resentment, that it will be impossible to get rid of him now. If he gives Rogers the slip, the man'll just round up his friends—the annoying bird guy, and the terrifying redhead who _broke his goggles_ —and they'll track him down together. And Rogers would probably cry again. God forbid. 

At zero five hundred hours, the sentinel pacing stops. There is a malevolent _flump_ , which is the noise the sentient couch makes when sat on. Then there is a series of sonorous tinks and clinks, which the Asset takes a moment to identify as the sound of tiny metallic objects rolling against each other. For heaven's sake. Rogers is counting the bullets in his vase. 

There are eight of them. Ditching his Kevlar and his STRIKE backup means that the Asset gets shot rather often.

Rogers counts the shells six times, sighs heavily, and replaces them in the vase. The Asset can picture his sad face in technicolour clarity. He scowls up at the ceiling. The man really is insufferable.

He shoves himself upright, stands up, and limps out to the front room. He walks quietly enough that he startles even Rogers, who hastily replaces the vase on the side table and stuffs his hands under his thighs, looking like he'd just got caught pilfering candy. Not that he ever pilfered any candy. That sort of sensible thing always got left up to Bucky, while Rogers tried to enlist and found himself upended in dumpsters and whatnot. "Steve."

In the dark, the blue eyes go saucerlike again. "Huh?"

"If I go back to New York with you, will you stop looking like someone drowned your puppy?"

Rogers considers this for a long moment, brows knitted together in concentration. "I dunno, Buck. Will you?" 

The Asset—Bucky, which, okay, is an acceptable name after all—gives an expansive shrug. "Maybe. No promises." 

The frown loosens slightly. "Okay. That's a start."

"Deal," Bucky says.

(Little Punk smiles like the first hint of sunlight at cockcrow. So does Big Punk, when he puts his mind to it.)

**Author's Note:**

> For anon's prompt: _What if Steve, after relentlessly chasing after Bucky post TWS, instead of fighting like he expected, crumbles the minute he sees Bucky again. He breaks and falls to his knees begging forgiveness for not jumping after Bucky, for not looking for him..._
> 
> Come say hi on [Tumblr](http://dirtybinary.tumblr.com) or check out my [gay arch-nemeses novel](http://valeaida.tumblr.com/post/149576789996/an-elegy-info-post) maybe!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] the prosecution rests](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9398822) by [quietnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietnight/pseuds/quietnight)




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